Archives

“Over time, about 25% of any given quarters’ financings are for newly backed startups (”first financings”); further, the overall number of quarterly biotech financings have been relatively constant at ~120 companies…this implies that the typical life of a venture-backed biotech (at least with regard to their venture financing needs) must be about ~4 years. This data suggest that within that period of time, most biotech’s must seal their fate – either via death (shutting down) or by no longer needing venture funding (e.g., IPO, M&A, non-dilutive deal making self sufficiency). Otherwise, if it took a longer time on average to reach that fate, we’d see an increasing pool of biotech companies getting venture financed over time, which we largely haven’t over the past decade.”

“…it’s no wonder that every big drug company wants to be “Partner of Choice” with smaller innovators. Nearly every pharma has hired consultants at some point to help it position its BD strategy more effectively”

“While the list itself is interesting, and each drug could be a blockbuster, I wanted to call attention to something the Goldman report and many others haven’t highlighted directly: the instrumental and essential role of smart business development deal-making underpinning these projects.”

SUMMIT, N.J. & CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – April 15, 2010 – Celgene Corporation (NASDAQ: CELG) and Agios Pharmaceuticals Inc., a privately-held biotechnology company, today announced the formation of a global strategic collaboration focused on targeting cancer metabolism. The goal of the collaboration is to discover, develop, and deliver novel disease-altering therapies in oncology based on the transformational science of Agios’ innovative cancer metabolism research platform. This platform is based on the concept that targeting key metabolic enzymes unique to rapidly proliferating cancer cells can “starve” the cancer.